


fish is the nicest thing to smell like

by suitablyskippy



Category: Tsuritama
Genre: Developing Friendships, Ensemble Cast, Gen, M/M, Sleepovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-15 23:35:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13041858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: The problem is that humans never seem to make the most of being human, except for Haru –hemakes the most of being human, whenever he happens to be human. That makes him an expert, and that means that, with Haru’s devoted encouraging support and guidance, Yuki’ll learn to properly make the most of being human too, before long.(Mind control might be the quickest way to make someone happy, but recently Haru's begun suspecting it's almost never the best way.)





	fish is the nicest thing to smell like

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tenser](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenser/gifts).



 

**one**

“Yuki!” says Haru. 

“No,” Yuki says at once, which seems to Haru like a silly sort of thing to say when Yuki doesn’t even know what it is he’s saying no to, but Yuki says it again anyway: “Haru, _no_.” 

He’s standing in the doorway of his room with the moonlight sifting silvery across his shoulders, and he starts to close the door. 

“Yuki,” says Haru, who’s being as always extremely reasonable about Yuki’s silliness, “no, but, Yuki, _Yuki_. Yuki, it’s okay. It’s okay! Look!” He puts his foot in the door. “I brought my bowl,” he explains, “so that’s, it’s – um, it’s okay now! Yuki! Let’s go!”

“Keep your voice down!” says Yuki. 

“Keep _your_ voice down,” Haru promptly mimics back. He likes the way the words fit together as much as he likes everything else about Yuki too. “Keep... your... _voice_ down! Keep—”

“My voice _is_ down,” says Yuki. It isn’t true: his voice is hissing like a punctured beachball in the process of deflating. All sorts of interesting expressions are happening on his face. All sorts of interesting human bits and pieces are working under the skin. Haru has all the same human bits and pieces but he hasn’t got the same sort of fluent mastery over them as Yuki has, because he hasn’t had as much practice at being a human as Yuki has. No one is as good as Yuki at putting in all the complicated work needed for making faces that look like Yuki. He’s making a particularly complicated one now, as he reluctantly says, “Are you – is there a problem...? Or – you’re, what _do_ you want?”

“I want to sleep,” explains Haru. 

“Yeah, well. Me too,” says Yuki, and then all his interesting expressions go into one great big convulsion of panic when Haru flings up his hands in delight at this discovery of their shared goals, ready to exclaim— “ _Haru_!” says Yuki, launching forward from his doorway to clap a hand across his mouth. Haru reels back on one leg more for the novelty value of having legs to reel back on than from any particular loss of balance, and makes an enthusiastic attempt to press his own palm over Yuki’s mouth as well which Yuki, disappointingly, foils, with a twist of his head and a jerk of his arm. “Haru, come _on_ ,” he whispers hotly, twisting out of reach again. “If you want to sleep, go and sleep. You’re not going to get to sleep any faster by pestering me. Look, will you – Haru, come on. Will you move your foot?”

Haru looks down at his foot and considers it. Not having had feet before, there’s a lot to consider. Toes, to start with. Toenails. The top of the foot. The bottom of the foot. The sort of interestingly pale stripe across the middle of the foot where his sandals block this planet’s sun from gaining access to his brand new human skin. 

“Haru,” says Yuki. Like a warning he nudges on the door, pushing it against the blockage to dislodge it. The blockage is Haru. 

“No,” says Haru, decisively. He reaches up to the yellow washing-up bowl full of water balanced on his head; carefully he dips his fingers and then daintily he flicks them into Yuki’s face, splattering him, so that Yuki blinks fast, makes a face, and then slumps nice and docile when Haru says, “Yuki, stop squashing my foot.”

Yuki stops squashing his foot. 

“That’s good,” says Haru, graciously. “I’m coming in now, Yuki, okay. Okay? Let me in.”

Yuki lets him in. 

Then he goes nice and quiet back to bed and gets in underneath his thin summer sheet. There isn’t enough space for Haru, but Yuki shifts obligingly over towards the wall as soon as Haru points this out, and then there’s plenty enough for both of them. Haru takes a rumpled towel from the back of Yuki’s desk chair, dips it into his washing-up bowl and wrings it out; then he drapes its sodden heavy length down the empty side of Yuki’s bed, adjusts it, fussily readjusts it, and hurls himself down onto it in satisfaction. 

“I didn’t let you in,” says Yuki. He’s normal Yuki again – the peaceful, agreeable attitude is gone. He’s watching Haru suspiciously. 

“You did,” says Haru. “I asked you nicely, Yuki, I said, I, um, I said I said – _Yuki_! Let me in! And you let me in! And now we’re going to sleep,” Haru informs him, “so be quiet, Yuki.”

“I don’t know,” says Yuki. The filmy curtains in his open window swell out and sink again above them both like the rise and fall of surf, a whitecap froth. “I don’t, I mean. I don’t think – that doesn’t sound like what happened.”

Haru rolls over and flattens his palm across Yuki’s mouth. “You have to be quiet when it’s, um, Yuki, you have to be _quiet_ at night, Yuki. That’s what Kate told me. She told me to be quiet at night.”

Yuki pushes his hand away. “You smell like fish,” he says. “You’re going to stink up my sheets.”

“Fish is a nice smell,” says Haru. “Fish is the nicest thing to smell like.”

Yuki gives him a long look that Haru’s more than happy to return, because the spill of moonlight pouring in from directly above the bed is very nearly bright enough to admire properly the scarlet of Yuki’s hair, bright as the shiny plastic warning buoys that link up to mark out the beach’s safe swimming zones – safe for humans, anyway. Anything goes, for fish. “All right,” Yuki says eventually. “All right, fine. You can stay. If you keep quiet, you can stay. But you’re really weird, Haru, do you know that?” 

“I’m an alien,” explains Haru. 

“Yeah, you mentioned,” says Yuki. “Once or twice.” Something new is happening on his face, and Haru watches with bright keen interest as one expression fights another one. Perhaps a smile? Haru knows all about smiling; he’s very good at smiling. That’s his best expression so far, what with all the practice Yuki’s been giving him. 

Right after saving the world, Haru’s number one priority on this planet so far is making sure Yuki gets just as much practice at smiling as he’s already given Haru. 

 

+++

 

 **two  
**   
Haru kicks off his flipflops at the edge of the sand and scrambles out across the slippery seaweed-slicked rocks barefoot; he jumps and skids and slides his way towards the rockpool caves in a skinny human shape with legs and arms and ears and toes and dives for the water in a shape already shifting and blurring to another shape, smaller and brighter, smaller and frillier – and the world careens over itself as he somersaults head over heels, fins over tail, the world’s proportions warp merrily out of order – and then the water closes over him: _plop_. 

_Took your time, nii-chan._

_I ran all the way!_

_So what? You run all the way everywhere_ , says patient long-suffering Coco – which is completely true, of course. Not running somewhere when instead he _could_ run somewhere seems like a wasted opportunity to Haru. He doesn’t really understand why everyone in Enoshima doesn’t run everywhere all the time – or, failing that, hop everywhere or hopscotch everywhere or bound up onto every narrow wall to tightrope-walk everywhere with outflung arms – and no explanation Haru’s ever demanded from Yuki on the subject has made it any clearer. 

The problem is that humans never seem to make the most of being human, except for Haru – _he_ makes the most of being human, whenever he happens to be human. That makes him an expert, and that means that, with Haru’s devoted encouraging support and guidance, Yuki’ll learn to properly make the most of being human too, before long. 

With a flourish of all his magnificent frills, he whips off into the luminous moonlit depths of Coco’s adopted pool. She’s where she likes it best, swimming laps of a long rocky shelf fringed with dimly glowing underwater mosses, blue-white and shining. She doesn’t like to sleep as a human, and she also doesn’t like to sleep in the cramped glass confines of a fishbowl, so she doesn’t like to spend the night with Haru at his and Yuki’s house, no matter how enthusiastically he explains to her the human complexities of blankets for sleeping under and interesting new clothes for sleeping in and brushing your teeth before _and_ after sleeping, which raises a variety of intriguing questions about how human mouths manage to get so dirty even when their owners are doing nothing but sleeping – so instead every now and then Haru comes to spend a night at the beach, where neither of them minds being in either sort of shape. She’s always in his mind the same as he’s always in hers, but when they’re together and in water a rising tide of _Coco Coco Coco!_ swells up to drown his senses – until the telepathic wave crests, breaks, falls, recedes to leave them comfortably saturated by the other one’s presence: an easy, familiar peace that makes dozing as simple as swimming. 

Long enough later that the tide’s had time to change, he scrambles from the pool with hands and feet again, with hair plastered down against his head, and sits dripping on the rocks to gaze up at the stars splashed across the clear cloudless night sky from above the water rather than below. 

At his side, Coco breaks the surface of the rockpool too and wriggles far enough out to rest her chin on her folded arms, kicking her feet idly in the water. Her hair is slicked flat as Haru’s till it hits the water and blossoms out behind her in a drifting pink fan. _Not the worst planet out there, I guess_. 

_Mmmmm_ , says Haru. _Mm, mm- hmm! It’s one of my favourites, Coco._

_We’ve only got two to choose from, nii-chan._

_And this one’s one of my favourites_ , says Haru. The tiny red lights of an aeroplane are moving through the network of bright stars far above. He doesn’t need to point it out; as soon as he’s noticed it Coco’s noticed it too, and as soon as she’s determined that it’s a human craft rather than that of a fellow extraterrestrial – the light signalling patterns are wrong; they’re arranged in contradiction of several intergalactic vehicle regulations – Haru knows it too, even though the handbook on assorted intergalactic regulations he was issued before departing for Earth has never seen use as anything other than a paperweight for Yuki’s endless lists of notes on their daily catches. _I think... Coco! I think – if we stayed, that’d be okay. I’ve decided, Coco. It’s okay if we stay!_

 _For a while_ , says Coco. 

_For any sort of while_ , says Haru. _Mmm... for a long while, maybe. Maybe for a looooong while. Coco! Maybe for a really really loooooooooo—_

Coco throws an arm around his waist and yanks him backwards from his rock, head over heels over fins over tail, one shape or the other, back into the depths of the moonlit pool from where laughter rushes up in streams of bubbles to burst against the surface. 

 

+++

 

 **three  
**   
“It’s probably not a good idea,” says Natsuki. “I share a room with Sakura, so—”

“Double sleepover!” Haru blurts at once, bounding to his feet and then leaping up onto the booth seat when just being his ordinary human height doesn’t feel like enough to properly express his full excitement at the idea of a double sleepover. This brings him to eye-level with a framed photograph of three friendly-looking whitebait hanging on the restaurant wall, which is a much better match for his enthusiasm, and such an invigorating new perspective that for almost a whole entire second Haru’s distracted from his goal. “Double sleepover! Natsuki! Natsuki, we’ll do it! I’ll tell Sakura-chan,” he announces, and whirls towards the exit of their booth. Yuki’s in the way; Haru claps a hand to his red red head to brace himself, launches over his lap, leaps to the floor and propels himself straight off up the rickety wooden staircase that runs from the Usami family restaurant to the Usami family home. 

Thirty seconds later he hurtles back down with Sakura in tow, as happy as Haru at the news, and Natsuki, being a prince whose heart is as soft as his very fluffy hair, surrenders with only a little of his usual fuss and grumbling.

Deep yellowy evening light is already flooding the upper floor. Shadows stretch as long and aimless as trailing seaweed. Sakura’s already in her pyjamas, her futon already unrolled; she lets Haru sit under the other end of her blanket, proudly takes the lid from a translucent green box of crayons, and in the aquatic golden light of sunset the four of them sit on the floorboards working industriously on a range of illustrations for Sakura and Natsuki’s bedroom walls. Most of the illustrations involve fish as a major theme and all of them involve fish as at the very least a minor theme, which is just as it should be; if by some oversight any of them hadn’t involved fish at all, Haru would have had to take his yellow crayon to them personally to make sure they did. 

Slowly, steadily, the remnants of the sunlight deepen, fade, swill into the gloom, and disappear. 

“I think I’ll – I might have to finish the fins in the—” yawning wide, “—in the morning. I _am_ tired,” Sakura remarks in sleepy surprise, pressing her hand across another yawn. 

Yuki tidies her pens, and Haru gathers up her papers, and once Natsuki’s seen her tucked safe and sound and self-satisfied into her sheets they retire next door, to the crammed little white-painted kitchen packed so full that half its cupboard doors won’t properly shut. Wedged in between the sink and a low-slung rack of cookbooks is stacked a pile of teetering saucepans so shining and so precarious that Haru can see the back of Yuki’s red red head reflected in them five times over: he’s a glittering scarlet zigzag, a kaleidoscope Yuki. 

“You don’t have to stick around, you know,” Natsuki tells them, keeping his voice low. “I mean, you can if you want to. You’re welcome to. But I don’t have much to offer in the way of entertainment. We’re just going to sit in the kitchen and then go to sleep.”

“ _I_ like it,” says Haru. 

“Yeah,” says Yuki. “I mean – yeah, I’m with Haru. I like it.”

“Yuki’s with _me_ ,” Haru informs the world in general and Natsuki in particular, and twirls his spoon through a satisfied spiral before jabbing it industriously back into his freshly-served cup of shaved ice. Torrents of whitebait syrup run stickily down its sides – sugar and fish, the two best flavours on the planet. 

“In fact – it’s just... it’s nice to, um. I mean,” says Yuki, trying again, frowning hard at nothing with that sort of drifting focus that by now Natsuki’s learned as well as Haru – _nearly_ as well as Haru – is a sign that whatever Yuki’s trying to say next will probably be even more interesting than everything else Yuki says usually, which means they should let him take his time as he tries to work out how to say it. “I mean,” Yuki starts again, determined, “I haven’t really – you know. Stayed round a friend’s house before. Or been to a friend’s house. Or... had friends. So it’s nice to just – you know. _Be_ at a friend’s house. Because it’s nice to... Well. To have friends. So it’s – I like it. This. I mean, I like this. Even if we just sit in the kitchen.”

“Doesn’t Haru stay round your house every night?” says Natsuki. 

“Yeah, Yuki,” says Haru, and jabs his spoon righteously at him instead. 

“Don’t you start,” says Yuki. “You know what I mean, anyway. Living together’s different. I mean, we live with my grandma too. It’s not – I mean, it’s just...” 

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” suggests Natsuki, taking sympathy. 

“Well – except for Haru,” says Yuki. He looks quickly at Haru; whatever he sees relaxes him, and he tips his cheek into his hand with a smile. The kaleidoscope Yuki in the zigzagging saucepan reflection behind him goes careening to the side as well, red red red and lopsided. “He’s always out of the ordinary. That looks disgusting, Haru, by the way.”

“It’s very tasty,” says Haru, raising his spoon with lofty pride. “It’s tasty and delicious. Um – Yuki, _I_ like living together.” 

“Oh,” says Yuki, startled. “Oh – me too, Haru, I didn’t mean to—”

“I like sleepovers too,” remarks Haru, and proceeds along his path of thought with the usual frenetic energy of a ping-pong ball hurtling from ricochet to ricochet far too fast to be caught. “Me and Yuki have sleepovers lots, actually. My bed’s comfier but Yuki doesn’t fit in it, so, um, so so so, _so_! So Yuki’s is best,” he concludes, and observes with great interest the spectrum of pinks and reds that Yuki and all his interesting complicated expressions manage to hurtle through in the next few speechless seconds. “Yuki, your face is all hot.”

Yuki’s face remains all hot even when he puts both of his hands across it. 

“You can finish this,” Haru tells him, and generously nudges the last of his shaved ice and whitebait syrup towards him across the table. “It’ll help you cool down.”

“I’m not sure anything short of getting dunked in ice water would help him cool down from that, Haru. But,” says Natsuki, getting to his feet, “I’ll make him a fresh one anyway. If you’re both so fond of sleepovers, shall I assume you’re staying the night?” 

 

+++

 

**four**

A lot of things look different once this planet’s only sun goes down. 

The island slopes all the way up to Haru and Yuki living all alone together now at the top of it. In the other direction it slopes all the way down to the sea, which lies rolled out and flattened to the horizon, and seen at night from the open window of Haru’s room the sea is black with ruffles and frills of silver, colder and stiller and opaque. The sea has always been his home but at night on this planet it doesn’t look homely; it doesn’t look friendly; it looks like it’s concealing its true black depths inside itself, malicious and sly, and Haru doesn’t like the way it feels to mistrust the sea at all. 

Haru’s had half a million new experiences every day for as long as he’s been on Earth. Learning to be afraid of the sea is his least favourite one so far. 

And when he goes silently barefoot along the hall, down the stairs – not resisting the urge to slide whooping down the banister because tonight, for once, that urge doesn’t come – and down into the gloom of the house, everything here looks different too. The saucepans hanging darkly on the kitchen wall: were there always so many, were they always so large? Was the sofa always that long, was it always set at just that looming angle? In the kitchen windowsill sits Coco’s fishbowl, filled with water and empty of fish; it catches the traces of moonlight well enough to glow like a bubble, filled up with light. 

Haru feels a little better at the sight of it. Coco’s out there somewhere, under the moonlight, probably awake and feeling unhappy about the sea just the same way he is. He opens the back door and goes out into the grey and silver garden. 

In the flowerbeds, the soil is still a little warm beneath his feet, like it’s remembering the heat of the day. Usually he’d never dare set so much as a single exploratory toe onto the dirt of Kate’s flowerbeds without permission, but Kate’s not here to grant it, and as careful as he can Haru picks his way through cool brushing leaves and blossoms drooping down with sleepiness and the dry crumbling of dirt between his toes. 

There’s space towards the back of this flowerbed, where Kate had been planning – where _Haru_ and Kate had been planning, chief garden assistant and chief gardener – something for the incoming autumn. Haru sits down. Beside him sprouts a flourishing clutch of monochrome petals which last month he personally assisted in planting. He pats the stem of one of them, reassures himself it’s sturdy. He’s feeling much better already. From here, if he leans to the left just far enough to avoid the obscuring exuberant foliage of the hydrangeas beneath the kitchen window, he can even still see Coco’s fishbowl on the sill: a glowing silver bubble. 

Carefully, carefully, he curls up in the space beside the flowers. The unease he’d been feeling gazing out to sea from the window of his room is all gone, almost; it’s no time to be awake, so he’ll go to sleep. 

“Haru...?” A far-off voice. “Haru – it _is_ you.” A far-off voice much nearer, now. Haru opens his eyes and sees flip-flops. “What are you doing here?” says Yuki. 

“Yuki,” says Haru, sleepily. “Yuki? Yuki, Yuki.”

“Of course it’s Yuki,” says Yuki, which would be a comforting sort of thing to say even if his voice weren’t so cautiously gentle with concern in saying it. Of course it’s Yuki, because it’s always Yuki, because Yuki’s always there for Haru – just like Haru always ought to be there for Yuki. 

Haru sits up. A considerable amount of soil sits up with him, and he starts brushing it industriously from his side. 

“I was awake,” says Yuki, “I was – well, I was awake. And I saw you going outside. And going into the flowerbed. And – going to sleep...?”

Haru tips his head consideringly to the side. He tips it consideringly to the other side. “I was feeling lonely,” he concludes, once he’s considered the matter from both angles and found it just the same both ways. 

Yuki doesn’t say anything about that right away. He’s looking at Kate’s flowers too, which are beautiful even without their colours, beautiful with only the memory of their colours. They’ll get them back once the sun comes up again, anyway. “Me too,” Yuki says at last. “I don’t think sleeping in a flowerbed’s the way to deal with it, though. No offence. Well – some offence, I guess. It _is_ pretty weird to sleep in the dirt, Haru.”

“Dirt,” says Haru with dignity, “is, um, it’s just the same as sand, Yuki. It’s nice. It’s soft! I _like_ it, Yuki.”

“Just as well, since you’re covered in it.” Yuki beckons, and Haru bows his head at once to let him brush all the leftover flowerbed from his hair. “Listen,” says Yuki, while he’s busy, “it’s – I know it’s kind of weird, but we _could_ sleep in the garden. I mean, not in the dirt. Obviously. But... if you still want to. It’s pretty warm out. And we’ve got picnic blankets.” He combs his fingers through Haru’s hair one final time; his hand falls away. “And – well, I mean. I couldn’t sleep either. So. It might be nice, with – with the flowers, and everything.”

Haru takes Yuki’s hand and replaces it against his head. “Keep doing that,” he orders – then amends, “Please. And then you can go and get the picnic blankets, Yuki.”

“Please,” corrects Yuki. He’s good at being gentle with things that come out of the sea; he touches Haru’s hair like it’s soft as seaweed. Something much nicer than loneliness is growing big in Haru’s heart, big enough to take up all the space there is, to push the loneliness aside. He knows his blood doesn’t run warm the same way real humans’ blood runs warm, but sometimes it’s easy to believe otherwise. 

“Please,” Haru says obligingly. Then inspiration strikes – and, all of his own accord, he adds, “Thank you.”

 

+++

 

 **five  
**   
Ordinary ducks are bad enough, with their noisy confidence and intimidatingly self-possessed waddling strut – not to even mention the universal shared tendency of ducks and duck-like beings on every planet to authoritatively claim ownership over all and any stretches of fresh water; finders keepers, so long as the finder is a very assertive duck – but the duck who works with Akira is far, far worse than even an ordinary duck. The duck who works with Akira has spent all summer twisting her head around from beneath her colleague’s arm or from her seat atop her colleague’s head or from her semi-concealed hiding place in the plantpot adjacent to her colleague’s own just to fix Haru with that stare of hers like she can see right through to what, as far as Tapioca’s concerned, as far as Haru imagines Tapioca’s concerned, is the wriggling little anchovy at the heart of him which she’d like nothing more than to flip into the air with her bill and snap up as it tumbles back down, gone with a swallow and a satisfied quack. Bye-bye, Haru. 

They’re friends _now_ , technically, with the world safe and Akira on their side and everyone friends all round; and it’s true that while Akira was arguing with Natsuki earlier about the most efficient method for kindling a bonfire suitable for barbecuing Tapioca had waddled over alone to Haru, and from a respectful distance offered him a humble _wak-waak_ , and shaken out her wings—

“Looks like Tapioca’s come to say hello,” Yuki had said, looking up with a grin as he rummaged elbow-deep in the icebox. 

But Haru had shaken his head, and Tapioca had given a single disdainful _wak_ that confirmed it. “She’s come to say sorry,” said Haru. 

“To say...?” Yuki shook his head in bewilderment. “Do ducks even understand—” but then he’d cut himself hastily off, flicking a glance over at where the squabble for custody of the matchbox was still heated and ongoing. Being friends with Akira has never made it any less risky to say anything within his earshot that could be taken as casting even the slightest doubt on Tapioca’s professional competence. 

So Haru and Tapioca are officially on friendly terms, but his heart still feels a little bit like a fearfully squirming anchovy inside him whenever he happens to catch her gaze directly, unexpectedly, and he’s secretly relieved that as the evening’s worn on she and Akira have settled together on the other side of the fire’s dying light. Akira’s stretched out on his back, chewing absently at a fire-blackened fish skewer; Tapioca’s head is tucked neatly beneath her wing as she takes a nap on Akira’s stomach. The sky’s alight with sunset and the sea burns with its reflection: smeared and gaudy scarlet, orange and yellow thrown in for haphazard highlights, the horizon a long thin glow of brilliant light that stretches from the mainland shore on one side out into infinity on the other, out until forever. It looks a lot like what happened the first and last time Haru appointed himself Kate’s second-in-command for all matters of interior design, but Yuki’s gazing out at this sunset now with a look of peaceful, rapturous wonder which is nothing at all like the way he’d looked at the spare room after Haru’d wrought his art on it by wielding a paint roller in either hand.

“We don’t have much going for us on paper,” says Natsuki. He says it quietly, like any noise louder than the endless crash and murmur of the waves might cause the sunset to startle, and scramble back in sudden self-consciousness below the horizon’s shallow curve. “Here in Enoshima, I mean. Good public transport links. Fresh air – that’s what they always put on the tourist brochures; we’ve got all the bracing fresh sea air anyone could ever want... But the fishing’s good, and we’ve got—” He opens his palm towards the sky. The sunset light dazzles from his glasses when he looks towards them across the fire; it’s still clear as seawater that he’s smiling. “ _This_. So it balances out, in the end.”

“Enoshima also has all of you,” cuts in Akira, unexpectedly. Tapioca ruffles her feathers in affront at her mattress’s movement beneath her as he speaks. “I consider that a merit of the place which no tourist brochure could ever adequately describe.”

“Excuse me?” says Natsuki. The repressed mirth in his expression isn’t all that repressed. 

“It would be a bold claim,” explains Akira. He’s switched his fish skewer to his other hand so he can smooth Tapioca’s wings; pacified, she settles down again. “Too bold for safety. ‘Fresh air and friendship’ – well, naturally the fresh air is guaranteed, but the friendship is a matter of chance and good fortune. _I’ve_ been lucky to find both; however, from a marketing perspective—”

“He’s getting sappy,” announces Natsuki, to Haru and Yuki across the fire. “This kind of thing’s dangerous unless you take immediate action. Akira, move your duck, get up. We’d better dunk you.”

“I’m not interested in being dunked, thank you,” says Akira with dignity. 

“No? Fair enough,” says Natsuki, and lounges back in the sand with his hands propped comfortably behind him. “I wasn’t that interested in going in the sea, either. Too cold at this time of night. It can wait till morning.”

“And Tapioca isn’t _my_ duck,” Akira goes on, his low serious voice weighed down with all its usual stern authority as Tapioca rises and gently falls with the movement of his stomach, peaceful as a rowboat on a gentle tide. “I’ve told you a dozen times before: she’s her own duck. Tapioca is an individual, Natsuki, just as you and I are individuals.”

“I mean, there’re a few differences,” says Natsuki. “Not to get into specifics, but Tapioca and me definitely have a few differences.”

“I think Enoshima’s got a lot going for it,” says Yuki. He doesn’t say it like he particularly means for anyone to hear him, and cheerfully quarrelling beyond the fire Natsuki and Akira don’t seem to; but Haru’s sitting right beside him, so close he can feel the fuzz of Yuki’s arm hairs whenever a chill breezes in and away again across the shore, and Haru hears. 

“Yuki?”

“I’m glad I moved here,” says Yuki. Without looking around he pats fumblingly over the sand between them. He doesn’t find what he’s looking for, because Haru’s been busy industriously working both his hands down into the sand so he’s buried to the wrists, but Yuki knows him well enough to guess what he’s looking for. He digs just far enough to unearth the nearest of Haru’s hands and takes it in his own, gritty with sand and held tight. “Nothing’s happened here that I’d change. It’s been – everything’s been amazing. Everything _is_ amazing.” 

At last he wrenches his gaze from the burning sunset and looks at Haru instead. He’s smiling. It’s a great big happy smile. The horizon seems small as a shrimp beside it; the sunset’s light is nothing, compared. 

Haru knew he’d teach him to get the hang of it eventually.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> To AO3 user tenser: I love every single weird and wonderful thing about Tsuritama, and I was very happy to match with you for it! You requested sleepovers, so here's a whole collection. I hope you have a very merry Yuletide!


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